by Peter Löcke //
Convictions become recommendations. Recommendations become measures. Measures become bans chiseled into legal stone. Protecting fundamental rights as much as possible, as Justice Minister Marco Buschmann put it not so long ago. Protecting fundamental rights as much as possible? There were once liberal politicians who would have been sick to their stomachs at such a formulation.
How should I eat, how should I get around? How do we heat in a sustainable way, how do we talk in a gender-equitable way? Which stimulants are either banned or legalized, which foods are rationed? Which of my data is stored where and why? I know. It's all for my protection. All for my own good. All for a better world.
Day by day, an encroaching German nanny state is empowering itself more and more and is bullying me. Worse still - it leaves many of these encroachments to the EU and the WHO. Sometimes it's just a small drop that makes my inner barrel overflow. In this case, it's a drop that still passes under the German media radar. The drop is called a general, future ban on buying tobacco from a certain year X.
Already a legal reality in New Zealand(1) from 2009, the tobacco purchase ban in parts of the USA such as California(2) is planned from 2007. For a better understanding: In 2040, only people who can prove that they are at least 31 or 33 years old by presenting their digital identity will be allowed to buy tobacco. Not a punch line. If you ask long-established German tobacconists, it is only a matter of time before this development reaches Germany.
The proponents' arguments are well known. As so often, it is about health protection. It's about a supposedly better, healthier world. When it comes to smoking, it is always about the war on cancer. This "war on cancer" was declared by Richard Nixon in 1971(3) and was originally intended to be won in the last millennium. Unfortunately, this did not work out, so a new war on cancer is being declared. A major weapon in this epic battle is called the mRNA vaccine(4). If you are wondering why an mRNA vaccine is being developed against a disease that can be caused by an mRNA vaccine, my cynical counter-questions are: Did you not know that antidepressants can cause depression, according to the package insert? Have you never tried drinking yourself sober in your life?
Back to tobacco. As a smoker, I have sympathy for every non-smoker who sees something positive in the ban on buying tobacco. I have little sympathy for the contradictions of the political prohibition fetishists, who bizarrely discover their love of freedom in other areas. Keyword self-determination law. Keyword legalization of cannabis.
Before I take you into the future, a self-disclosure. I confess that I smoked pot from time to time when I was young. Unlike a US president who also confessed, I even inhaled. A quarter of a century later, the statute of limitations should have expired on my offense and the poison should have been broken down by my body. Now I am entering the world of 2040 with the idea that I was born in 2010 and am therefore thirty years old. What is allowed and what is forbidden in the green Future World in terms of smoking and carnal desires? Below is my dystopia.
I'm sitting at home with 30 grams of black Afghan to smoke my world away. This possession is healthy and legal. I acquired the legal drug from my Afghan neighbor who is also legally in Germany. The asylum law has been abolished because it was considered right-wing extremist per se. Unfortunately, I have to enjoy my joint straight, as the purchase of tobacco is a punishable offense in my age group. Tobacco is unhealthy and illegal. After smoking, I'm overcome with carnal desire. Not what you think. I get hungry, so I want to eat a roll topped with bologna. However, eating it is illegal because I have exceeded my state-approved daily 10-gram meat ration as well as my permitted energy consumption. Freezing, hungry and completely hypoglycemic, I turn on the TV. There, Chancellor Ricarda Lang is warning against too much sugar in the human body. Chancellor Lang leads the GRÖKO. That's Germany's grand ecological coalition. I switch to the second. There are only two programs left in the fight against disinformation. On the second, Vice-Chancellor Sven Lehmann explains to primary school children how they can find, define and change their gender. Disgusted, I turn off the TV and go to the only window in my small apartment assigned to me by the state. I look out of the window onto the street decorated with a hundred rainbow flags. The flags serve as a memorial against all forms of fascism.
I hope that this exaggerated dystopia never becomes reality. If it does, I would drink myself sober. Until then, I'll resist. Maybe I'll even fight back smoke-free. Only I'm doing it voluntarily. Freely and willingly without a patronizing and overbearing state.
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11 Responses
I was born with anarchy. The rule was not absent, but it could be tricked. The rule was the father and he thought that there should be no contradiction. That only worked as long as everyone went along with it. Another story from my childhood (big thanks to my parents for their textbook of my life, and I mean that seriously): Bread dumplings were sacred on the lunch table in Bavaria. They were served almost daily in some farmhouses. Utilization par excellence. Old bread rolls, bread dumplings, vinegar dumplings, fried dumplings and so on. Our neighbor had a considerable number of still usable bread dumplings in her pantry. They were a very important part of our family's food supply. One day we were sitting at the lunch table. My older brother Peter said: "I don't eat these bread dumplings any more". I then said: "I don't eat these bread dumplings any more either". And the next little brother said: "I don't want any more bread dumplings either". That was the start of the bread dumpling war. A disaster for our family government. This was followed by punitive measures that achieved nothing. We emerged victorious because we stuck together. If nobody adhered to the useless paternalism, we could preserve our freedom.
And I oppose any form of unconvincing paternalism. And if it came to convincingly justified paternalism, I wouldn't be able to notice it anyway. Then I'd probably be soup. But as long as I can still control myself in some way, I choose to resist.
Anarchy (ancient Greek ἀναρχία anarchía "absence of rule", from ἀρχία archía "rule" with negating alpha privativum) refers to a state of absence of rule.
...and when I feel like smoking a cigarette, I do. Every day I see the gruesome images of war that are promoted by the very health apostles who think they can ban us from everything. I am in favor of writing the following on the tanks we deliver:
"Wars endanger our health! "Wars kill your loved ones". "Wars cause cancer". The war in Ukraine has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives in one year. "Wars leave behind orphans". "Wars take away people's families, their neighbors, their homes, their social structures." Wars take everything from good people".
It's called the education system.
People are deprived of all opportunities to have their own experiences, including negative ones, and to develop further. Smoking, drinking, eating, shagging - sorry, this obscenity is due to the current discussion about Till Lindemann, the phenomenon of groupies and the irresponsibility of adult people's own actions. In this context, I would also strongly recommend banning the Munich Oktoberfest, where things regularly get just as rowdy. - Back to the topic: everything is regulated, restricted and banned. The do-gooder of today rides a cargo bike, heats with green electricity, eats a vegan diet as a matter of course and genders himself from morning to night with his verbal statements. - In the past, the period between birth and death was called "life", today it is more likely to be "green-red-woke socialization".
I had - unfortunately - started smoking when I was younger, but then kicked the habit, which wasn't easy. I was smoke-free for a good two years, I didn't care at all whether the cigarettes were glowing around me, I always enjoyed the occasional joint in a cheerful get-together, but that's a different topic to the usual nicotine addiction. I was even a vegetarian.
But then came this constant drone of "green" abstinence propaganda. At some point, I bought myself a packet of "Schwarzer Krauser", along with OCB leaves and not quite legal "spice" from a friend in Orientalistan, 2 kilos of meat (with no sheep, i.e. pork), really cheap and unhealthy pre-marinated from the discount store, supplemented by a solid range of canned beer, and made myself comfortable at the barbecue, producing CO2. A nice friend then drove me home in her 500 hp SUV.
Oh, living away from "green" can be fun 😉
It is completely incomprehensible to me how people can advocate smoking.
I was a heavy smoker myself for decades and got my act together in time at the age of 50.
I am still annoyed today at having succumbed to the zeitgeist of the time and the massive advertising. Yes, another ban, but one that will save thousands and thousands of lives.
Yes yes the smokers .... funny that heavy smokers get older than people who are young healthy and athletic after RMNA vaccinations suddenly and unexpectedly die even non-smokers or who were healthy and then suddenly get cancer and that even in childhood or Vaccineaids ... a rogue who thinks evil! Sometimes I think those who don't have any information should just go to ......
That's awesome! I thought to myself, it's a good thing I turned 60 last week and can still buy my heets in Poland. I gave up cigarettes a good 4 years ago. I smoke healthier now, if there is such a thing. Wink smiley! Well, I'm not a big drinker because of my neurological disorder, but I could switch to cannabis to alleviate the pain level. That would be allowed in my case. But I don't want to. I don't want to walk around with a foggy brain. I refuse to take anti-epileptics and antidepressants because they lead to other things that I don't want. Painkillers or analgesics don't help, so I can do without them. Not to mention my liver and kidneys!
Diet yes, low carbohydrates, lots of vitamin C.
So when I sometimes sit here and think about what I do without, I think that's quite a lot. I find it all the more dystopian, if I may say so, when an obese woman talks about Haribo for children. If I may, I find it dystopian when a LWM of Turkish origin talks about giving up meat. I also find it stressful when a climate update is playing in the box in the evening.
Sometimes I'd like to drink myself sober, and rightly so.
There are reasons for this. 7 years of misdiagnoses, delayed surgery, the consequences of which I now have to live with. As if that's not bad enough, you're bombarded here every day by idiots with all this useless junk that nobody needs.
Sometimes I put on my Tens device and smoke a Heet. Then I wish it was all just a bad dream. No, I'm not going to let these idiots take this dream away from me and a crisis is somehow a new beginning. But I admit, it can really get to you on bad days.
Let's hope that these scenarios are not the future, especially not for those who have children and grandchildren.
For the first time I feel threatened by this state, and that at the age of 70.
I've never heard of Sven Lehmann before, have I missed someone as a propaganda denier? Apart from that, the dystopian sentences made me smile involuntarily, because the world will be so funny from 2027 onwards that Ricarda Lang as Chancellor may no longer look the way we think she does today, and therefore no Afghan will be needed to make her funny to smoke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXWVW_AX1Yk 😉
In retrospect, I noticed a misleading sentence structure: propaganda (aka vaccination) "denier" was aimed solely at me. Because for two and a half years, it can happen to miss something. Take, for example, the mandatory wearing of masks outdoors on the shopping streets of my city; so that one Saturday evening at the end of 2020, not suspecting anything bad, I was confronted with a REWE store manager around the corner from me, who immediately called the police when his regular customer, who had been me, tried unsuccessfully to enter his realm breathing freely as usual. I staggered home without my shopping, not without rubbing the clearly younger and taller man's nose in my grimace, before I left the mimosa - "you're getting cheeky too ... don't move!" - left immediately. At home, the explanation for this unexpected experience was quickly found on the Internet. The result today: on the positive side of the scale of refusal, the gains are piling up, on the other hand, the individual events such as the one described remain unforgotten. And, to put it in gender-neutral terms, even I now know THE green-sexual gaga STATE SECRET - this previous ignorance is certainly no loss either 🙂